ENVIRONMENT: Lawsuit challenges county land swap

Retired federal biologist Larry LaPre examines the endangered San Diego ambrosia in April 2015. The plant is on county-owned land north of Lake Elsinore that is now part of a land swap with developer Castle & Cooke.

ENDANGERED PLANTS

Range: Western Riverside County, San Diego County, parts of Baja California

Flowers: No petals, but small yellow, white or translucent flowers

Munz's onion

Status: Listed as endangered in 1998

Type: An onion that forms reddish bulbs about a half-inch long.

Range: Found only in certain clay soils in western Riverside County.

Flowers: Small purple and white flowers in sphere-shaped clusters.

CONSERVATION EFFORT

What: Western Riverside County Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan

When: Approved by Riverside County and 14 cities in 2003 to conserve disappearing habitat for 146 protected plants and animals, several listed as endangered or threatened with extinction.

Governance: Established the Western Riverside County Regional Conservation Authority, which has representatives from the county and 18 cities, to acquire and manage habitat lands to create an interconnected 500,000-acre wildlife reserve between the Cleveland National Forest and the San Bernardino Mountains.

Strategy: The wildlife reserve plan calls for state and federal agencies to acquire or pay for 56,000 acres of habitat, while local government is to acquire 97,000 acres, all of which will join 347,000 acres already protected.

Funding: Development fees, landfill fees, and state and federal grants.

Environmentalists are challenging Riverside County’s plan to swap land in Lake Elsinore that’s home to two endangered plants for property that was once part of a clay mine.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Northern San Jacinto Valley and Idyllwild environmentalist Tom Paulek on Thursday filed a lawsuit contending that the 40-acre swap violates state environmental law and conflicts with a regional conservation plan.

The 40 acres to be traded to the Castle & Cooke development company includes an area just off Lake Street that is one of only three places left in the world where the San Diego ambrosia – a ground-hugging herb with fuzzy, blue-gray leaves – still grows in the wild, the suit alleges.

The trade also would provide the developer with an area occupied by the Munz’s onion, which can grow only in a special kind of clay-laden soil.

The 40 acres were part of 598 acres that Riverside County acquired in 2004 to be part of a wildlife habitat reserve for 146 sensitive plants and animals in what was then a landmark agreement with federal and state wildlife officials.

The agreement’s goal was to create an interconnected 500,000-acre wildlife reserve between the Cleveland National Forest and the San Bernardino Mountains. Reserving that land allowed developers to build elsewhere in western Riverside County with less red tape from the state and federal wildlife agencies.

Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game last year submitted a strongly worded letter to the county that described the land swap as “a retreat” on conservation accomplishments that help meet preservation goals for the two endangered plants.

Castle & Cooke has been to trying acquire the 40 acres in recent years.

On April 5, the county Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 to trade this land for another 40 acres of land near hillsides. For decades, those hills were mined by Pacific Clay Products to get clay to make bricks.

In a 2014 report to his board colleagues, Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, who supports the land swap, said trading the streetside land where the plants grow for the hillside property would help the developers create a viable project that would result in “new employment opportunities and sales tax revenues.”

The habitat land is next to the company’s future Alberhill Ridge planned community, which will include more than 1,000 homes.

Jeffries could not be reached to comment Thursday. But last month, Jeff Greene, Jeffries’ chief of staff, said that Castle & Cooke will have to successfully relocate the endangered plants or develop a management plan to protect them, before anything can be built. The deal also relieves the county of slope maintenance costs.

April Rose Sommer, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, said that relocating endangered plants is rarely successful and that their best chance of survival is to preserve their existing habitat and leave them undisturbed.

County spokesman Ray Smith said no tax dollars will go toward the litigation. In the land swap deal with the county, Castle & Cooke is responsible for any legal cost stemming from the trade.

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